Traditionally, utilities have done an excellent job of providing a reliable source of power to their customers. Utilities do this by accurately predicting consumer demand and then ensuring that they have adequate generation resources available to meet that demand. Historically, demand for power increases each year during peak heating and cooling months, resulting in a need for ever increasing amounts of generation capacity. A review of the peak period demand clearly show that the need for a substantial amount of new generation assets could be eliminated if there was a way to shift some of the demand from peak to off peak times.
The deregulation of the electric industry has heightened concerns over power outages, price volatility and how the eventual outcome will impact the economy and our way of life.
For example, recent events in California have captured the headlines and amplify these concerns. California suffers from 10 years of load growth with no new generation facilities being built to meet the demand. Internet data centers like the one in San Jose represent unanticipated new demands for power 24 hours a day equal to that of 60,000 homes. State mandated deregulation activities forced the major utilities to sell off their generation assets resulting in them having to buy the power they used to self generate from others.
Demand reduction programs and more advanced controls have been proposed to assist in reducing demand during peak times.
Currently, utilities do offer demand reduction programs to their customers. These programs are designed to shift loads out of peak periods by providing a financial incentive for consumers to move loads to a time when it is less expensive for the utility to produce or obtain power. Time of day rate is an example of such a program.
Another type of program offered by utilities is the traditional Demand Side Management (DSM) program. This type of program provides the customer a monthly credit for allowing the utility to interrupt power to major loads in their home during peaks or emergencies.
While both of these programs have been shown to work, they each have their problems. Time of day rate programs may be difficult for customers to understand. Therefore these programs have a very low participation rate among the customer base. DSM programs, on the other hand, have a much higher participation rate. However, DSM load sheds are seldom exercised by the utility. And, when the utility does exercise a load shed, the resulting interruption of power tends to affect customer comfort, thereby causing large numbers of customers to drop out of the program. In addition, current DSM programs cannot differentiate between those consumers that contribute to a load control, and those that don't, while providing incentive credits to all who sign up.
While both time of day rates and DSM programs can be effective, each have challenges in the area of customer satisfaction that erode their usefulness. In addition, utilities earn little revenue from these types of offerings and therefore look to new generation as a more economically viable option.
Thermostats, thermostatic control devices and environmental control systems have been designed, manufactured and placed in use for many years. These devices are primarily designed to sense the temperature inside a site and based on occupant designated setting, activate the heating and/or air conditioning system or systems to maintain a comfort level based on the occupants designated level of comfort. There are two main types of design for these devices: a standard single control device or a dual control system.
The standard single control device can be set to activate a heating or cooling system based upon a manual switch to select either system and a degree setting mechanism to select the desired temperature to heat or cool to if the temperature falls or rises below or above the occupant designated set point. A dual control system is attached to both a heating and cooling system which has two set points, one for the heating system activation and one for the cooling system activation. With this type of a control, the user sets a desired minimum temperature, below which the heating system will be activated to raise the temperature during winter seasons, and a maximum temperature, above which the cooling system will be activated to drop the temperature during summer seasons.
This type of temperature control device provides the occupant the convenience of not having to manually select either the heating or cooling system, as is the case of the standard single control device, and allows the occupant to define a temperature range between which they are comfortable. Using these two main types of design as a base line, there are many variations, which have been developed over time. Over the years, these sensing and control devices have moved from traditional bi-metal contractors to more sophisticated electronic devices over the years, and have incorporated the ability to be programmed with multiple set points for both heating and cooling as well as having the ability to activate these different set points based on time of day, day of week, and/or externally generated control signals from utility companies indicating a fixed cost tier that is in effect, e.g., low, medium, high & critical, and to interface with an infra-red motion sensor that automatically sets back the temperature to a predetermined point based on the presence of a person in the area. However, most end use consumers do not have the time, experience, and/or access to data to monitor, track, and use these devices.
The present invention is aimed at one or more of the problems set forth above.